Big news! Today we published the first-ever in-depth study of wolf ambushing behavior! By identifying 748 spots where wolves waited-in-ambush for beavers, we show how wolf choose ambushing locations that seem almost perfect for catching beavers. (1/9)

Beavers primarily detect predators on land by using their noses! But, beavers have beady little eyes and poor vision. Because of this, beavers cannot see motionless predators. The video above demonstrates this very nicely (this is from a little side project we did). (2/9)

Wolves seem to have a good understanding of beavers' sensory abilities and wolves pick their ambushing spots accordingly. Wolves almost always choose ambushing spots downwind of where beavers will be on land (~89-94% of ambushing attempts are downwind). (3/9)

In other words, wolves pick spots where beavers cannot smell them because wolves appear to know beavers have good noses! More interesting is that wolves almost always pick ambushing spots really close (10-15 feet) to where beavers will be on land. (4/9)

Wolves appear to know beavers cannot see them. Because of this, beavers, quite literally, would never see an attack coming! Ultimately, by waiting close to where beavers will be, wolves prevent beavers from getting a head start back toward water once an attack is launched...(5/9)

...and reaching water is a beaver’s only hope of surviving a wolf attack.

All-in-all, wolves pick ambushing locations that counter beavers’ primary sensory defense (smell) and capitalize on beavers' primary sensory weakness (vision). How fascinating! (6/9)

We want to end with this: by documenting wolf ambushing locations over the past 5 yrs, our research clearly shows wolves can use ambush hunting strategies and our work continues to overturn the traditional notion that wolves only kill prey by outrunning and outlasting them! (7/9)

Instead, wolf hunting strategies appear highly-flexible with wolves able to switch between different strategies depending on the prey they are hunting. Of course, there is much more that we could not share in a single post so we will share other major findings soon. (8/9)

Citation of our new paper:
Gable et al. 2021. Wolves choose ambushing locations that counter and capitalize on the sensory defenses of their prey. Behavioral Ecology.

If you want to read the paper, you can download a PDF of it from our website here: http://www.voyageurswolfproject.org/peer-reviewed  (9/9)